Projo College Hoops

So the school that bears his name yesterday pulled off one of the greatest upsets in college sports history. But who was George Mason?

According to a National Archives biography, Mason was one of the most outspoken and influential delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787. But Mason eventually refused to sign the Constitution, because he feared that it did not ensure proper citizen participation, and would eventually lead to a monarchy, or at least government by a small aristocracy. The Archives biography does credit Mason as one of the driving forces behind the inclusion of the Bill of Rights into the final document, and behind the 11th amendment, which placed limits on the power of the judiciary.

George Mason's basketball team, of course, has a New England connection -- head coach Jim Larranaga was a high scorer for Providence College from 1968 to 1971. It turns out the old Patriot has some regional significance as well; in 1774 he helped draw up the Fairfax Resolves, which stated the Colonists' constitutional arguments against the Boston Port Act.

So what's with the fuzzy green mascot? For a time, George Mason used a man in Colonial garb as its school mascot. But the university dumped the mascot when it decided that a white male character was not representative of its student body's diversity. For a time it adopted a gorilla mascot, and later a knockoff of Jim Carrey's character from the movie "The Mask." Eventually came "Gunston," a Phillie Phanatic-type creature that "may have been hatched from an egg found by the Sociology and Anthropology Department during an excavation at Gunston Hall, the home of the university’s namesake." OK, not such a great story, but the story of the Patriots' impossible drive to Indianapolis is much, much better.

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